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Hello everyone,
It’s Andrea from Italy.
I hope my message finds you well.I’ve recently found an antique 70mm Steinheil München Refractor on a local website for buying and selling astro-gear, and I’d like to know something more about it!
If you are interested, I’ve made another, more complete post about it on the “Telescopes” forum (maybe this one is a better place for discussing such an instrument). Here’s the link to it:https://britastro.org/forums/topic/antique-steinheil-muenchen-refractor
If you like it, let me know what you think about this piece of history!
Kind regards,
AndreaHere are some more close-up pictures of the eyepieces!
As you can see they are all unmarked.Andrea
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Andra, hello, I am also Italian, I live in L’Aquila. That must be a mid-19th century telescope. Nothing exceptional: lactescence (spherical aberration), chromaticism, coma. If you want to show it off in your living room (after you’ve cleaned it up a bit, of course) it might do. However, if you plan to observe the sky with it, then I recommend using that money to spend a nice evening in a restaurant with a pretty girl. Maybe I’m wrong, but I remember my mother always telling me: dear son, old stuff dies in the house of fools.
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Maybe I’m wrong, but I remember my mother always telling me: dear son, old stuff dies in the house of fools
The Northumberland refractor in Cambridge is still in regular use. I have used it myself and it is a fine instrument.
The 12″ Northumberland was built in 1834, so pre-Victorian.
The 1864 Thorrowgood is also a fine scope. That one is only 8″ aperture.
I have also looked through a 17th century refactor, an exhibit in the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford. The roof of Blackwell’s bookshop was clearly visible through a conveniently placed window.
Some stuff has to be extremely old before it dies.
Hello Andrea, I forwarded your post about the Steinheil refractor to Bart Fried of The Antique Telescope Society. I suggest you contact him for further advice. His reply is :
Re: steinheil refractor.
Bart Fried
12/10/22 23:44
1
It does, but there’s no tripod? Also, the wood block is a home-made adapter to use it on an alt-azimuth mount. But it’s a wood tube and it was almost certainly in a cradle of some sort. If I were that fellow, I’d offer 1500 Euros and see what happens.Bart
Sic itur ad astra!
On Wed, Oct 12, 2022 at 4:13 PM denis buczynski
Bart
FYI this post came up on the BAA forum, it looks a nice example of it
type.https://britastro.org/forums/topic/antique-steinheil-muenchen-refractor
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